NAPTIME ACTIVISM
BREASTFEEDING IS A HUMAN RIGHT Breastfeeding is an important human rights and feminist issue. A woman’s breastfeeding success can be undermined by inadequate support from health care professionals and family members, workplace obstacles, and misinformation from the formula food industry. It is only because of activism—mostly volunteer— that breastfeeding initiation is where it is in the US today.
milk-Substitutes—a consensus document that recommends regulation of formula marketing. Eighty-four countries have implemented all or part of the provisions of the Code.
The US has done nothing to implement the Code and in 2007, 72.6% of US hospitals BY PEGGY O’MARA offered free formula gift bags to peggyomara.com all new mothers. A CDC epidemiological review of studies on these gift bags found that 7 out of 11 who received them, showed lower When I attended my first La Leche League exclusive breastfeeding rates. Martha Walkmeeting in 1973, I didn’t know that I would er, nurse and lactation consultant, reversed become one of only 22% of US women who this trend in just eight years with her Ban the were initiating breastfeeding and one of just Bags Campaign. By 2015, 78.7% of US hospi8% still nursing at three months. In 1970, tals reported banning free formula samples. breastfeeding rates were the lowest they had ever been. All this changed largely because The best way a new mother can ensure that of the activism of La Leche League Internashe will not be given free formula samples tional. By 1975, breastfeeding initiation had is to give birth at a Baby-Friendly Hospijumped to 33.4% and was at 61.9% by 1982— tal, where these samples are not given out. it had nearly doubled in just a decade. In 1991, WHO and UNICEF launched the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative, a global Surprisingly, initiation rates in the US deprogram to encourage broad-scale impleclined for the next 15 years. The World mentation of the Ten Steps to Successful Health Organization (WHO) attributed the Breastfeeding and the Code. Since then, more general worldwide decline in breastfeeding to than 15,000 facilities in 134 countries have “sociocultural and other factors including the been awarded baby-friendly status, including promotion of manufactured breast-milk sub- 604 in the US. stitutes” and responded in 1981 with the International Code of the Marketing of Breast- To extend the idea of baby-friendly beyond
